Maison&Objet: Day one

I had planned to be in Paris this week for Maison&Objet but decided to skip this trip when the opportunity arose for me to go India for the first time in just a few short weeks.

The business woman in me thinks it was a smart decision, and the mom in me is happy to not be feeling quilty about being away yet again but the creative soul in me doesn’t want to hear from those two…she just wants to at the show absorbing every ounce of insight and inspiration.

So rather than miss it completely I decided to sneak a peak into what was going on at the show, get inspired from afar and and share a highlight of the day.

“An encounter with designer Pierre Paulin”

For sixty years Pierre Paulin has been creating world renowned furniture, products, and interiors and even if you don’t recognize his name you’d recognize his work whether from the screen of a James Bond movie, a display at the Museum of Modern Art or in seating area at the Louvre.

The Mushroom chair is a part of the permanent collection of MOMA

The Mushroom chair was the first design Paulin constructed using covered foam over a wire frame and its unique form was considered revolutionary at the time.

The shape and colors of the Tongue chair instantly make me smile

This chair was just the first of many sculptural chairs designed by Pierre Paulin in the 60s and the one that I instantly associate with his name is the Tongue chair.

Paulin is one of the most significant French designers of the 20th century that came to notarity in the U.S. in the mid-60s.

The New York Times first reviewed this marriage of cutting-edge design and material innovation in 1967. It was love at first sight for critic Rita Reif when she wrote, “the wedding of the sinuous, brilliantly colored prints with the sculptured furniture is so successful that it is hard to imagine one without the other” (New York Times, December 6, 1967). **

This brought back thoughts of design icon Jack Lenor Larsen (who’s work I have loved since college) because many of Paulin’s pieces were covered in funky fabrics which he designed. Larsen’s collection of innovative, stretch-woven upholstery fabrics were designed to work on the curvilinear designsand set a new standard in textile design.

Artifort re-introduced Le Chat, with a slight modification in JLL’s fabric “Momentum“

These two were quite the force in the 60s and I think Artifort sums it up best, “These great designers definitively changed the way the world looks at furniture design. Angles became curved. In shape, material and textiles. Organic. Colourful. And, most of all, surprising. Challenging.”

Just thinking about them has inspired me to get back to a little creative design project of my own but I’ll be back tomorrow to give you another glimpse into my inspiration from Maison&Objet.

Resources:

More about Pierre Paulin and Jack Lenor Larsen at Artifort

From “Happy Birthday Pierre Paulin” at frenchculture.org**

See furniture at Surroundings and Architonic